1. Field
This document relates to a plasma display apparatus and a method of driving the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A plasma display panel comprises a front panel, a rear panel and barrier ribs formed between the front panel and the rear panel. The barrier ribs form unit discharge cell or discharge cells. Each of the discharge cells is filled with an inert gas containing a main discharge gas such as neon (Ne), helium (He) and a mixture of Ne and He and a small amount of xenon (Xe). When the plasma display panel is discharged by a high frequency voltage, the inert gas generates vacuum ultra-violet rays, which thereby cause phosphors formed between the barrier ribs to emit light, thus displaying an image. Since the plasma display panel can be manufactured to be thin and light, it has attracted attention as a next generation display device.
The plasma display panel is driven by dividing a frame into several subfields having a different number of emission times. Each of the subfields is subdivided into a reset period for uniformly generating the discharge, an address period for selecting cells to be discharged and a sustain period for representing gray scale in accordance with the number of discharges. For example, if an image with 256-level gray scale is to be displayed, a frame period (for example, 16.67 ms) corresponding to 1/60 sec is divided into eight subfields SF1 to SF8.
The duration of the reset period in a subfield is equal to the duration of the reset periods in the remaining subfields. The duration of the address period in a subfield is equal to the duration of the address periods in the remaining subfields. The sustain period increases in a ratio of 2n (where, n=0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) in each of the subfields. Since the sustain period varies from one subfield to the next subfield, a specific gray level of the image is achieved.